1. Field of the Invention
The present invention related to an inputting apparatus of mandarin phonetic symbols, especially to a novel phonetic symbols inputting apparatus with only sixteen inputting keys. It is convenient to construct an inputting apparatus of mandarin phonetic symbols after degrading the required keys and area, and furthermore, becomes an invention with significant contribution in economical.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Everyone who uses mandarin inputting schemes knows, that inputting scheme of phonetic symbols needs 41 keys and space bar of a conventional keyboard for receiving inputs of 37 mandarin phonetic symbols, 4 tones, and neutral tone. Although this type of one-by-one mapping scheme is convenient for typewriting, but becomes a disadvantage to a small system while establishes such a phonetic symbol inputting interface. A consideration is that a great deal of keys are needed, to increase those keys in a small apparatus such as handhold calculator will upgrade cost and size of the apparatus.
In addition, conventional inputting scheme of mandarin phonetic symbols can not allow inputting error. A lot of ambiguous tones in mandarin, such as curly tones (" and ", " and ", " and ", and " and "), some vowels (" and ", " and ", and " and "), and sounds in mandarin (first tone, second tone, third tone, fourth tone, and neutral tone) that cause inconvenience for some users who will need to reenter for misunderstanding the ambiguous tones. Thus, traditional inputting scheme of the mandarin phonetic symbols needs some further improvements.